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For several months, we’d been batting around the idea of interviewing Christian Wiman. We knew of his poetry and had read Every Riven Thing, his latest book of poems. And I was incredibly interested in his successful approach to reviving Poetry magazine as its editor.

But, it wasn’t until I was watching Bill Moyers’ interview with Wiman one Friday night though — and the ensuing response online — that I pushed him to the top of our list. Gratefully, he accepted our invitation and our host Krista Tippett took him even deeper into his ideas about religion and God, death and the ineptitude of poetic language romanticizing it, and how poetry can become a “false idol.”

We’ll release our show with Christian Wiman, “Remembering God,” on this Thursday, April 12th — first on podcast and then on public radio stations throughout the week. Until then, watch this marvelous interview.

Reflections

Thank you for sharing the Moyers piece. Wiman's a marvelous poet and speaks so eloquently, movingly, and honestly about faith and writing but especially about his cancer. He's also a wonderful reader of poetry and prose. I look forward to your forthcoming podcast.

Grateful for this, and have been mining it for sustenance and inspiration for days, now. So much that is commendable here: foremost, the power of poetry to teach us how to pray and how to suffer nobly. Thank you, Moyers, and Wiman for this gift. I've typed up a few luminous lines, by Wiman, in order to try and Remember:

‎'It seemed like the world was looking back at me, it was just lit, just radiant.'

'A crisis of faith is the only crisis there is. We're always having it... We mistake it for other things... my job, my marriage... You can't fix your life if the ground of your being is unsure.'

'I love the life that I've been granted/ in this deepening shadow of death"